


My Shining Scales

by ApprenticedMagician



Category: Free!
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Mer!Rin, Mermen AU, Sousuke too but he's a shark, mer!Haru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 00:50:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10059998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApprenticedMagician/pseuds/ApprenticedMagician
Summary: “Haru, would you give it a rest, already? You’re not supposed to swim longer than thirty minutes at a time – doctor’s orders!”“Gou isn’t a doctor, Rin.”“She’s nearly completed her training, Haru, I think she knows what she’s talking about when it comes to a scratched tail.”The first meeting between Haruka and Sousuke the Great White shark doesn't exactly go well.





	

Despite knowing the opposite, there remained a part of Haruka that childishly believed Rin was someone he could out-stubborn and outswim. This was a rare occasion wherein he wasn't referring to their frequent races – the tally of which was 62 to 55 in Haruka’s favour, not that he was counting. No, today was a day to keep to a merperson’s everyday relaxed swimming pace, if one could call Haruka's pointed but limping and ineffective tail thrusts 'relaxed'. Not that it mattered. Haruka stubbornly maintained that he could keep up his infinite swim of the city longer than Rin could follow him and needlessly beg forgiveness, injury or not.

“Haru, would you give it a rest, already? You’re not supposed to swim longer than thirty minutes at a time – doctor’s orders!”

Haruka made a face and rolled his eyes, all the while continuing to swim. “Gou isn’t a doctor, Rin.”

“She’s nearly completed her training, Haru, I think she knows what she’s talking about when it comes to a scratched tail.”

Furious, Haruka swiveled around and gave Rin a glare that had the merman fidgeting and flinching with guilt. A school of krill similarly slowed their path before rerouting around the two mermen to give them a wide berth.

“Pfh,” Haruka huffed, looking away now that his point had been made. “‘Scratched’, he says.”

Calling his injury a ‘scratch’ was far too light a term for the utter _gouging_ his tail had taken. The wound was an inch deep in its worst spots, running a crude and jagged path nearly half the length of his tail from his waist down. And even though it had aged six days and had finally been freed from Gou’s kelp gauze, nothing could cover the profound ugliness of his torn and missing scales. Some were even thinly attached and floated with passing currents whenever he stopped moving, as though he were twelve again and shedding his childhood scales.

“Hey,” Rin muttered, recapturing Haruka’s attention. “I know you said to stop apologizing… But I’m-”

Haru rounded on him immediately, eyes sparking and fingers jabbing, “If you say ‘sorry’-”

“Alright! Geez! I’m _not_ sorry then! I just…” Rin struggled to find his words. Eventually, he deflated, guilt overcoming his defensive anger. “You know I didn’t mean for it to happen, right? I wouldn't have pushed so much if I had known you didn't like sharks.”

Haruka sighed, knowing he couldn't blame Rin for that part at least. “I know, Rin.”

'Sousuke' was a relatively young Great White that Rin had managed to befriend over the past several months. Haruka had heard about him but wasn't all too impressed that some sharp-toothed pup was taking up so much of Rin's time. It had come time for Sousuke to migrate though and Rin wanted Haruka to meet him before he left, not knowing about his mate's nervous disposition around _massively sized predators_. Unusually excitable for the creature he was, Sousuke was not at all gentle with greeting the new merman and Haruka panicked a little, turning to duck into the split sunken ship nearby. Sousuke had clearly thought Haruka was playing (as he and Rin no doubt had done before) and startled Haruka even worse when he burst into full speed, thwacking his side and sending the merman for a bit of a tumble right into some awfully torn edge from the ship. 

It had been terrifying, Haruka remembers, to be both dazed and frightened and impaled – not to mention _upside down –_ and _why_ did sharp human things have such longevity in the water nowadays? In his pain (and his slight panic), Haruka had mindlessly twisted himself right-side-up only to worsen the drag of his tail on the caught edge and made the damage all the worse. Which _then_ made him much more panicked about Sousuke’s predatory presence and driven him into outright hyperventilation – nevermind Rin rushing to his side and unhelpfully nattering on about how “ _No, Haru, it's fine! He knows it’s not the blood of any prey, you’re gonna be fine, shhhh. You’re okay. In fact he’s gonna get realllly sensitive in a moment – Sousuke’s been accidentally sending would-be friends for tumbles ever since he matured into the giant that he is. Hey, Haru, hey, oh… shit, you are going to be_ **_so_** _mad at me when you see the state of your scales._ ”

After calming down and seeing Gou for treatment, Haruka was, as predicted, furious ( ~~embarrassed~~ ) and had refused to see or speak to Rin for two days and nights, banishing him from the house.

“ _And who picks a shipwreck as a playground!_ ”

" _It was clandestine for a first meeting!_ " Heavily scorned at the time, Haruka had ignored Rin’s indignant response. 

The Rin floating in front of him now was looking much more contrite. “I should have warned you. Or guessed about your feelings for his kind.”

Haruka snorted. “Why, so he could circle me? Bat me around deliberately? How many _kind and gentle_ sharks have you met?”

“More than you, considering you won’t swim within half a mile of ‘em. They are not like that, Haru. I’ve never met a needlessly cruel shark. And Sousuke never would have hurt you on purpose, he knows how important you are.”

Haruka raised an eyebrow. “Important?”

Rin’s face promptly flushed and _damn it_ , Haruka could never pass up a chance to poke at Rin's pride. “I… That is… to me, alright? Important to – me.”

“Oh?” And now Haruka started swimming again, lightly, gently, _tauntingly_ , circling Rin like the phantom sharks from Haruka’s childhood nightmares. “And how would _Sousuke_ know a little thing like that?”

Rin steadfastly did _not_ follow Haruka with his eyes. “We, I… we talk. I talk. You’re… my mate Haru, of course I’m going to talk about you.”

“Mmm,” Haruka hummed, casually brushing his dorsal fin against one of Rin’s many ticklish spots. He was delighted when Rin couldn’t hold back a small shiver. All these years together and Rin still blushed for him.

“He wants to meet you again, you know,” Rin said, breathing deep and reigning in control, knowing Haruka was having fun at his expense. “To clear the water, I think.”

Haruka sharped his gaze. “You mean to _apologize_.”

“Why do you say that like it's a bad thing? Nice creatures apologize when they’ve hurt someone accidentally and the fact that you’re so determined to sulk over it doesn’t change anything!”

Haruka stopped his swimming to frown in surprise. “…I’m not sulking.”

Rin rolled his eyes. “Yes you are. And I know it’s because you think your scales are ruined forever so… I made something for you.” Haruka blinked in surprise, his annoyance overridden by fervent curiosity as he watched Rin reach into the tied satchel at his waist.

Rin was trained as a smith so his gifts were usually decorative and fashionable, jewelry or trinkets or thing-a-ma-bobs to liven up a hair style or living space. And, okay, maybe Haruka _had_ been feeling a little disgruntled about the mess of his scales. But that was only because everyone always said they admired how his scales resembled the clearest of surfaces on a sunny day. The shimmer and aquatic colour of his tail had always been a private point of pride for Haruka and to see half of it – _half –_  so hideously disrupted with dried blood and scar tissue had him feeling a little self-conscious and insecure. His scales were what had caught Rin's eye in the first place when they were kids, followed shortly by his speed. This injury had robbed him of both those things at least until it healed. Even then, he might only get one of the two back. 

And then Rin revealed his gift.

“… _Rin_.”

Awed, Haruka reached out a hand to feel the patchwork of golden scales laid across his partner’s hands. It was a covering, a triangular sash of sorts or maybe a piece of armour, with small plates of brilliant shining gold, not unlike some of the scales from Rin’s own tail. Not that Rin could have made it from his own tail, it would have meant pulling half his tail and some of the red besides. The piece was just barely too heavy to be made of scales anyway.

“Do you like it?”

Haruka looked into Rin’s nervous eyes. “It’s beautiful,” he assured, glancing down again to further admire it.

“Would you like to try it on?” This time when Haruka looked up, Rin had his usual smile which only widened when Haruka wordlessly nodded.

It took a minute or two, Rin needing to swim back and forth to Haruka’s left and right to adjust the plate over his wound and secure the ties around fins, but finally he pushed back and both of them turned to admire the fit of the piece. Haruka gave a few curious kicks of his tail. It shimmered more beautifully than any treasure he had seen before and moved seamlessly with his body. Haruka couldn’t stop looking at it – Rin had made him beautiful again. And now they _matched –_ exactly sappy enough for Rin to have done deliberately.

“The humans used to have something called ‘chainmail’ that moved similar to this. That’s what inspired the interlocking of the pieces. Which I made individually by the way; had to visit the volcanoes to melt down most of my medallion collection.”

Haruka’s eyes flew to Rin’s.

“Your…?”

Rin _loved_ his medallion collection. The shapes and sizes of them, the ribbons they came attached to, the human ‘sports’ that they depicted, Rin was obsessed with everything about them. He’d been collecting them since before his father died; one of Rin’s most treasured memories was hunting for such medals among shipwrecks and ocean floors. And he had… for _Haruka_ …

In the next moment, Haruka had launched himself into Rin’s personal space, embraced his body, clutched his hair, and trapped his mouth with a fierce kiss. He could feel Rin’s victorious grin but Haruka only kissed him more insistently – he didn’t want Rin to be able to _breathe_ without knowing how loved Haruka felt, how badly Haruka loved him back.

_‘ **Rin.** ’_

But Rin was just as stubborn as Haruka and began laughing. Unbothered, Haruka moved his hands to Rin’s face and snuck in light pecks anywhere he could reach. “Haru!” Rin began squirming half-heartedly, probably overwhelmed by his partner’s outburst of ticklish affection. It was only when Haruka ran out of breath that the kisses stopped, resting his head against Rin’s and sweeping a thumb across his face to stay in the mood. Rin’s eyes were shining.

“You’re not usually so amorous,” Rin teased.

“You’re not usually so sweet.”

Rin blew bubbles in his face. “Liar. I’m always sweet… Does this mean I’m forgiven?”

Haruka gave a light tug to red hair. “You never needed to apologize.”

Rin gave a strange hum, as though unconvinced but also unwilling to argue his point. Just to make sure, Haruka sank them both into another kiss, this one sparking a fire between them that burned sweet and slow.

“So,” Haruka breathed, moving his attention to Rin’s jaw, “when can I try meeting Sousuke again?”

“You actually want to?!”

Haruka stretched to nip Rin’s ear. “How else am I going to thank him?”

Rin sputtered. “Thank _him_!? _I’m_ the one who made -”

“You will be thanked later,” Haruka assured. “In private.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this based on a prompt from RinHaru Week in 2015, another fest which I avidly watched but did not participate in at the time. This came from Day Four and the prompt was to write an Alternate Universe so, of course, I reached for a mermaid AU. I also wrote it to learn a little more about sharks in an attempt to lessen my fear of them. I'm not sure I succeeded but I'm happy to have written this anyway. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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